and the days pass
by autumn midnights
Summary: War is hell; afterward, all is not well. /Or, how the events of Deathly Hallows impacted everyone. Content warnings inside.


_Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns Harry Potter, and I do not. _

_CONTENT WARNINGS: Please note this entire fic contains themes of depression and PTSD. Also, warnings for specific sections: (iii.) contains descriptions of alcoholism/excessive drinking and (v.) contains self-injury content. _

* * *

_i. Lisa Turpin_

Sometimes, the hustle and bustle of London can drown out the thoughts in her head.

Nobody's looking at her - slight, blonde, with perpetual dark circles. She dresses in plain, neutral colors - charcoal gray, navy blue, black. Rarely do eyes in the street linger on her. She likes it that way. Blending in with the crowd, the voices, car horns, engine rumbles all mixing together and sweeping over her. It's the polar opposite of the time she spent hiding from the Snatchers with Stephen, and she likes it that way.

The money Lisa had liberated from her parents hadn't lasted long. When it had run out, they had moved to hiding out in more rural places, scavenging for edible plants, skimming from countryside homes set so far from each other that nosy neighbors were never a risk.

And it was there, in a forest, that a band of Snatchers came upon their makeshift campsite. It was freezing cold; they had risked making a fire to warm up. Lisa was gathering more kindling, maybe ten meters away from Stephen. Far enough away so that they didn't spot her. Close enough to see him fight, taking on all four of them at once. Close enough to see the flash of lethal green light, hear his body fall to the forest floor with a terrible finality.

(Far enough to Disapparate, crying.)

She stays in the busiest parts of Muggle London, surrounded by people who don't really see her. She finds a job as a clerk in a store with too-bright lights and bad music playing on the speakers, and when she falls asleep at night, she wonders why she's alive and Stephen isn't. Stephen, who was going to go to Eton before Hogwarts and magic came into his life, who could write the most professional, eloquent essays she had ever seen in her life, who was going to do _something _with his life - he was gone. In his place, Lisa the salesclerk.

She doesn't leave the neighborhood. Her grandmother invites her over for tea, and she briefly considers it, but the thought of going to that house in the countryside, surrounded by flat grass and trees, dead quiet all the time, sends her into a spiral and she misses an entire shift at work, unable to get out of bed. That area is inextricably linked with Snatchers, with fear and hiding, with seeing Stephen die, with that awful moment of leaving him behind.

And the days pass, one after another, just like this.

* * *

_ii. George Weasley_

There's something missing.

Half of him is gone. He's sure of this. They've done everything together for all of their lives; it's always been Fred-and-George. They came as a set, a matching pair. They played Quidditch together, took the same classes, had the same friends. Death was the only thing that had been able to successfully separate them. And now, without his other half, George feels incomplete.

He switches back and forth a few times between staying in the Burrow and staying at their flat. Neither is better than the other, because both are so closely tied to Fred. They had separate rooms at their flat, but that doesn't change the fact that they shared it; it feels the same as staying in their shared childhood bedroom. He sees his friends, on occasion, but something's always missing, new awkward pauses there that didn't used to be before, as though those were the spaces in conversation left for Fred.

Verity and Ron help him open Weasley's Wizard Wheezes back up again, and it does a good business, but the spark isn't there anymore. He spends his days creating more of the things which are selling out, using the same charms and potions they'd been perfecting for years, but there's no new products, no innovation - he doesn't know how to create on his own, because it's always been a back-and-forth, brainstorming and tossing ideas around _together. _He can keep replenishing the stock, on and on, and he will - but there's no joy left in it, any of it, because there's no joy to life in general anymore.

And the days pass, one after another, just like this.

* * *

_iii. Daphne Greengrass_

She drinks to forget.

She drinks to forget practicing the Unforgivable Curses on whatever small animals Amycus Carrow could find. She - and many of the other students - had been as kind as possible when performing the Imperius, only making the animals do small, simple tasks that caused no harm. Crabbe and Goyle had not been as gentle; they had proven many times over that the Imperius Curse could override an animal's self-preservation instinct. She drinks to forget the tortured squeaks from the numerous fates they had conjured up, each more grotesque than the last. And that was before they had even moved on to the Cruciatus Curse.

She drinks to forget the fear. Daphne spent the entire year anxious about Astoria, who hated the Carrows with a burning passion, who nurtured friendships with people from other houses while proclaiming what a progressive Slytherin she was compared to everyone else. Astoria snuck out after curfew and vandalized the Carrows' classrooms, more than once. So much could have gone wrong, and even though Astoria was never caught, sometimes the thoughts spiral in Daphne's brain, all the awful things that could have happened to her sister rising up at once, and she drinks to push them back down.

She drinks to forget late afternoons, when the Carrows loved to hold detentions, when it was impossible to walk down the dungeon corridor without the sound of screams in the background, echoing on and on. Crabbe and Goyle would sometimes help, and they would always return looking far too pleased, and it made her sick.

When she drinks enough Firewhiskey, she doesn't dream, just passes out into dark, empty unconsciousness and hours of relief.

And the days pass, one after another, just like this.

* * *

_iv. Demelza Robins_

She wakes up in the morning, and goes to the mirror, and stares at herself.

Her right arm is gone. Barely even a stump left. She's not sure which is worse - wearing items of clothing with short sleeves, and having the oh-so-noticeable absence of an arm, or wearing things with long sleeves, and seeing the sleeve flap limply down at her side. Sometimes she swears she still feels it, and she goes to reach for something before realizing nothing is there. Or she'll feel bolts of pain, and briefly think she's back at the Battle of Hogwarts.

(Sometimes, she can still hear the Death Eater shout, "_Reducto!"_)

Her shoulder and neck are scarred, the burned skin pink and pockmarked. Healed now, technically - no open wounds, no risk of infection, no special treatment necessary, but it will never be smooth skin again. It goes down as well, the side of her breast and her ribs, all the way onto her hip. The Healers were able to treat her, but even magic had its limits.

The scarring creeps slightly onto her jawbone and lower cheek, but out of everything that bothers her the least; Muggle cosmetics can even out the tone to the point that it's only noticeable up close.

She sighs, picks up her wand with her left hand, adjusting her grip twice. "_Accio," _she whispers. Her hairbrush shoots past her and thumps against the opposite wall. Wand movements aren't intuitive anymore. She tries, again and again and again, but it seems every spell she tries is subpar.

And the days pass, one after another, just like this.

* * *

_v. Hestia Carrow_

When she concentrates, she can still smell Alecto's breath on her face. She remembers the older woman snarling at her, forcing her wand arm up, pushing her towards the third-year who was chained to a dungeon wall. Flora standing beside her, egging her on to perform the Cruciatus.

And she remembers doing it, giving in, casting the curse, because she couldn't even imagine what would happen if she didn't. The screams were so high-pitched. Like a baby. Hestia remembers being thirteen. Remembers gossiping with Daphne Greengrass about how Zabini got hot over the summer. Stupid things, childish things. This child would remember thirteen as the year they were tortured.

Hestia hides in the lavatory, and whispers, "_Diffindo." _

A sharp pain flares up, a thin red line appears across her thigh, and she exhales. Pain for pain. As she gave, now she will take.

And the days pass, one after another, just like this.

* * *

_vi. Michael Corner_

Nights are the worst.

He tries sleeping with the light on, but he's not ten anymore, and that doesn't stave off the bad dreams.

Every night he wakes up screaming, the memories pouring back. The first-year girl - Rosemarie - down in the dungeons. His half-cocked rescue plan, which he dragged Morag into. Pushing them ahead of him, casting Disillusionment Charms on them first, and then the Carrows coming along. Seeing him. Seeing the empty dungeon.

He lost track of how many times he was Cruciated. And it wasn't just that - Amycus nearly suffocated him twice, Alecto kicked him and broke one of his ribs, they did _something _that felt like lines of liquid fire lashing across his back. He spent two full days down there. More than anyone. And for the rest of that school year it's almost a badge of pride. _"Oh that's Michael Corner he spent forty-eight hours in the dungeons, fuckin' badass." _He tossed and turned, had bad dreams, had trouble sleeping - but after the Battle, when everything quiets down, when every day is no longer spent planning a rebellion with nothing in his veins but adrenaline and caffeine, it gets so much worse.

Over and over again, he replays those two days in his head.

And the days pass, one after another, just like this.

* * *

_Author's Note: _

_All of these characters here are canon, although a couple are little more than a name. A lot of this is based off of my own headcanon for these characters. This fic is arguably a companion piece to my older fic "Remembering", which takes place during Deathly Hallows and is written in a similar style of short sections featuring minor characters and their experiences during the war, so if you enjoyed this, consider checking that out as well. I do love DH era and have quite a few stories featuring this time period._

_Thanks for reading, and if you enjoyed, please leave a review! _


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